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User blog:AnnikaDoll/Galaxy Mew Mew—Writing process, analysis, etc
In rereading Galaxy Mew Mew again, I reignited my interest in the Galaxy Mews and their story. I figured I’d write a little bit on my perception and process of writing the chapters now that I’m done with the main story. This is kind of all over the place and jumps back and forth between points (plus my writing here is informal) but I hope it’s at least easy enough to understand what I mean! Mostly, this is an analysis of my own work, a comparison to techniques usable in other works, and a speculation on elements within the story that I hadn’t considered when first writing it. If you like writing, composition, and literature beyond just consumption, I do talk about some things like pacing, exposition, dialogue, etc., you might find it interesting to read. But again, it’s mostly just me talking about the story itself! Furthermore, I would highly suggest for you to have read the story to some extent if you care about being spoiled, since I spoil elements from the introduction chapters. I don’t go into too much detail about elements beyond the first 4 or 5 chapters, but you should at least know the basic story to understand what I do reference. ---- I think one of my favorite things about the earlier introduction chapters is how I tried to write these connections between characters. There's a chance it didn’t reflect too well on the reader, and surely there were cheesy moments, but I'm pretty satisfied with this overall. There were conflicts among the group as with any team, and I wanted to show colony life still being lived by these girls even while being Mews in order to portray to the reader a genuine bond between the teammates and their supervisor. They play poker, they hang around and spar with one another, etc. Even if I didn’t go into a lot of detail on scenes like this, the fact that they exist is kind of a way for me to depict that they are a genuine team but also still their own people with their own personalities and perceptions. One thing I think was interesting was the way I tried to write dialogue. I feel a little embarrassed by how it could be very hokey and forced at times, though I chalk that up to magical girl series typically being this way. I think I tended to add lines that maybe might be throwaway lines and unnecessary, but I've genuinely heard real people talk with awkward or cheesy quips. I also impressed myself with the action scenes. Whether they were good is debatable, but I had absolutely zero experience in writing any kind of action and was more used to writing description than dialogue or fast-paced scenes. This is probably one of the first projects where I genuinely tried to write something involving actiony situations, and while it is definitely not the best writing in the world, I want to believe I did depict at the very least basic actions that could be pictured by the reader. By this I mean I believe I had clarified just enough to not be confusing or lose anyone (well, for the most part anyway. There were some lines where I kept asking myself “What EXACTLY did I mean??? What???”) There is a genuine kind of flow I’d imagine you’d want to go for when writing quick-paced action with dire moments and situations. The action of the characters, the words that the reader will absorb—these are important, but so is the flow of the words. The way your reader’s eyes will move can attribute to their perception of the situation. If I were to write an action scene with really long-winded descriptions, it feels less tense for some people (as far as actual quick-paced action goes, rather than suspense or lingering emotional scenes in the midst of battle. Long speeches or descriptions in the latter ones would work to an advantage because it can build tension in a way different than you would build tension in a high-stakes action scene). One way I seemed to have written these scenes was to separate the sentences and keep the paragraphs short. Consider how one might write visual poetry in which the words form a picture, or you are meant to read a piece a certain way. Some of my favorite books when I was in middle school and early high school were by Sonia Sones (she wrote mostly life drama pieces, but I bring her up for a reason, bear with me!) and in some of her books she had the tendency to Write much of her sentences in such a way that seem to start and suddenly stop. It creates a very specific atmosphere for the reader and you perceive it very differently than if I were to simply continue to write in paragraph form. Using a style like this actually helps in action scenes too, and even with dialogue. Certainly the lines are going to be longer than what was shown above, but they’re still short in comparison to paragraphs of description or long-winded fragments of conversational dialogue. A way I conveyed action scenes in later chapters actually involved me clumping the sentences together to form larger paragraphs, but maintaining that short sentence structure to keep things feeling quick paced. If I ever described anything, I wouldn’t focus on it for too long. Even dialogue can follow this short pattern—in a conversation between multiple people, a moment of speech does not go on very long in a casual environment unless someone is going on a tangent or trying to explain something. There are exceptions (and I even changed up my methods in later chapters) but this is very common, especially among friends. Everyone will chime in and say something, even for just a quick moment. To convey this, you’d want to use multiple shortened lines to mimic that specific casual flow. I understand that it might be a very uncomfortable flow for some, and that maybe they may perceive it as an exhausting start-stop-start-stop pattern, but to some extent I feel like I managed to convey it decently for me being so new to writing on a bigger project. (I certainly still have a lot to learn, but I found myself learning quite a bit from this project). A big problem I noticed throughout the series aside from grammar errors and strange flow was the lack of descriptive imagery. For the most part my attempts to write larger chunks of text were misguided and clunky, even in later chapters despite elaborating a lot more than in initial chapters. In other moments, I glanced over a particular scene that might have been a little more weighty if I had elaborated more. This is especially important when describing the environments of the areas on Earth the Mews had visited for the first time. Considering the Earth was so important to everyone, I didn't do it justice. Furthermore, things like Ehne’s ship or the colony could have used much more elaboration so that a better picture of the area could be painted. I painted a base picture, but not a masterpiece of description. The closest I ever get is in my art of the series but that’s more a random scene than it is an elaborate setting piece, so even then the surroundings are vague. A reader might understand my intent or fill in the gaps themselves, but I still feel I didn't do enough on that end. To engage a reader, description that allows for a good visualization of a scene or setting would absolutely help. This is also something I passed over for character descriptions. I tended to be very brief in those things, however I do think that it is a huge cliché to introduce a character and focus an entire paragraph on how they look. At least, when I was a middle schooler/high schooler reading fics on Quizilla and all the other old sites from the early 2000's, this was extremely commonplace. Some people genuinely find the tactic jarring and a little tacky, and would prefer to spread the information on a character out over time—Writing a character’s traits in little snippets rather than in one single paragraph. One thing I used to do a lot as far as descriptions was use a ton of exposition with a character introduction. This is written hastily because it’s just an example, but compare: :Alice had sparkling blue eyes and soft blond hair that flowed down to her lower back. She wore a frilly light blue dress and white stockings complete with black mary janes. She was a very curious little girl who lived a quaint life, often spending her time conjuring strange stories and wistfully reading her books. and : Alice looked at the Cheshire cat in awe. She’d thought of such creatures existing in storybooks, songs, and wild imaginations like hers, but never did she believe she’d ever face something so peculiar in reality! : “Curiouser and curiouser!” she mused. tucking a tuft of blond hair behind her ear and watching as the feline beast grinned a sly grin whilst chuckling at the short girl. You slowly and subtly reveal character traits and personality without stopping the ENTIRE story to expose a character in one sitting. I sadly did use the former technique often. I do think in some areas it is perfectly acceptable to describe multiple traits at once, especially if it is important to the story, the scene at hand, or to a character’s perception. Some people focus very much on details of appearance when they first see someone, so it is not 100% unrealistic to write things this way. I didn’t overdo my descriptions in the series all too much (for better or for worse) but I did follow that pattern of introducing a character and being expositiony, especially in the very first few chapters with Hikari and Chrysalis where I actually paused the story here and there to talk about them. In some places it was necessary, but in others it could easily have been spread out. I introduced characters in the environments they are typically found—In the first chunk of paragraphs of chapter 3 for example, you learn that Chrysalis is blind, that she has a brother, and that she sneaks out a lot because of regular nightmares (likely regarding her fear of The Rush and the events she went through that day). With that information, it’s a little easier to piece together what her life is like in the colony without going into too much detail straight away, (but I did anyway >n<). And another problem would have to be lack of explanation or continuity in some areas—I don’t think it was anything very BIG but some stuff was a little odd to me. I believe I reread the first time the girls combined their powers and thinking “okay but where in the story did I ever explain that was a possibility?” Admittedly it’s riding on the coattails of most magical girl anime where the characters can magically lend their power to the main lead because of friendship, bonds, fate, or some other thing, but more often that not that power hardly explained. It’s sometimes a good idea to not be super specific with overexplaining every little thing in your universe, though. Why do catgirls exist and how? Explaining that would just ruin the fun. A scientifically accurate, mathematically correct, or explicated magical girl anime would spoil the point of a magical girl anime, but I think it could be interesting to implement. I just doubt that I could be the one to do it! Despite how “serious” in tone this story was (not edgy, but certainly not super kiddish) and how some in-universe mechanics were elaborated on, there is still a huge remnant of the magical girl formula lingering, so it’s tough to really properly explain everything. The only audience for this type of story would exclusively be fans of the show, and anyone else would probably be lost reading it. And because fans of the show would read it, there are elements you can potentially leave out for audiences to fill in themselves based on what was in the show. I do think it would have been nice to elaborate more on certain details, like what I mentioned above. I feel like If I had included a conversation where Akio spoke to the girls about potential powers, or their capabilities beyond a single body, this could have been less clunky. Even though he didn’t actually know they could do this with their powers (for some reason, and it feels kind of odd he wouldn’t given he created the project and seemed to know a lot of other stuff about their powers, oops) it would have been a little better to at least throw in this “Maybe your powers could do this,” type speculation with the girls or even scrap Akio’s line, “I wasn’t aware you could do that,” and instead have a session in which they test out their powers to see what they can and can’t do. But again, to overexplain something based off a magical girl Anime would be very odd! I also embarrassingly admit I didn’t have a structure for this series whatsoever—I had no first drafts or pre-written plans. I was still new to writing a story this "big" so I was starting from zero. I really only started to write Galaxy Mew Mew because when I was doing color-overs, I saw a lot of people kind of liked the story I came up with for the team, so I wanted to write a story for it. I was at the time pretty interested in stuff like Don Bluth’s film Titan AE, so I actually incorporated the entire premise of “Something happened to the Earth and now the rest of humankind resides in space” as the core of my series. It is certainly not the only piece of media to have this premise, it’s just I was a silly little teenager and that’s all I knew then! It wasn’t actually until about chapter 3 or 4 that I started to come up with a list of potential plotlines—that line where Chrysalis says that there has to be more to their work than just destroying aliens actually was me projecting about how there needs to be more to this story than just character chapters. Writing Ehne was a joy, and even though at the time my writing was simple, I do like how I conveyed her. I have very fond memories of writing Ehne and I really loved writing her as bitter and snide as possible. At the time of writing the story, I was very timid like Hikari, very softhearted (this has since changed with time), so writing someone forward, crude, and completely opposite of myself was a challenge, but a fun one. I drew Ehne both from the idea that aliens are trying to domineer the Earth to save their people (a premise from the actual TMM series), and from some pre-existing species I had created for a completely different fandom. That original species was actually supposed to have gone extinct due to a catastrophic natural event, and one of the characters in that story was meant to be the sole survivor of her kind. Nexus even sort of stemmed from this too. Ehne's inclusion was also kind of important because I wanted to have another character who was separated entirely from their home as Nexus was, but with a different circumstance. It begs the question of whether her actions were even justifiable given her tragic history and given she has no sense of genuine morality. When you compare her experiences and character to Nexus, who, despite her situation, still managed to be a kind character, it gets even more ridiculous and complicated. Furthermore, Nexus eventually made friends while Ehne was completely isolated. Her instincts were based on survival and preservation of her species’ remnants, but Nexus had the luxury of knowing strong emotions and love for her team. There is a stark difference between the aliens given that Ehne is from a drastically morally different society from ours and Nexus is from one that is more comparable to ours. I’m not saying “my story is deep,” or anything, I just mean there’s a bit of thought that went into these parallels. I actually hadn't planned it out at first since the story was so sudden, but I eventually tried to work things through. As present as this parallelism is, I do really wish I explored it more—Nexus and Ehne would have much more interesting interactions if I had, aside from the few they did. If anything, Ehne would have had a high personal vendetta against Nexus especially for being privileged enough to make friends and be welcomed by another species with open arms. She would have lauded this creature with immense power being used by the human race to protect itself, and that probably could have created way more tension if I had considered it more. I think the only other things that I can see that turned out “symbolic” in some way (and completely unintentionally since I was focused more on researching animals common to or at least present in the area of the girls' battles than the symbolic nature of the animals themselves) were the Chimera Anima that the girls each fought for their first battles as Mews, and even how they defeated them. As I was rereading the chapters for their introductions, whenever the Mews would fight a Chimera Anima, I would go “Oh wait that’s actually pretty interesting let me take notes” (because I’m a nerd who likes to overanalyze things sometimes, lol) So this is a silly explanation, but bear with me!: *'Niji’s' first Chimera Anima was a scorpion, and the rapid nature of the creature reflects change. Niji’s life was suddenly changed by her being thrust into the hero role. The scorpion is a signifier of rash quickness and change, effective given that it is the first creature the reader and Niji encounter. She is transitioning and changing from a life on the colony to a life as a heroine. *'Hikari’s' first Chimera Anima was a puma/cougar which signifies courage. Her fight alone with it was her evolving from her fearful child state to her heroic Mew state. It was necessary for her to become strong enough to do what she had to and to overcome her fears. Additionally both her and the animal were feline in some way, but her animal is a significantly “smaller” form of feline and the Chimera Anima kind of signified what she would or should eventually evolve into. (that is absolutely cheesy). *'Chrysalis’' first fight was with a snake, which is associated with thins like wit and slyness, effortless dodging and snark. Chrysalis is pretty snarky and silver tongued, speaking her mind often and barking at anyone who dares to talk down to her, yet is someone who is able to take conversations where they are needed. She also lied and snuck her way into areas that would allow her to prove her worth on the ship, and even defeated the Chimera Anima with a sly plan and outmaneuvering. *'Hotaru’s' first fight was with three hyenas—they are tricky and energetic much like she was, and she had to think outside the box to actually defeat them. She was the one who came up with the idea to combine powers when nobody else had before. She had more imagination in that regard than her teammates did. Granted, Chrysalis had proved before that she could come improvise plans too, but her ideas were based more in logic while Hotaru’s ideas seemed based more in imagination. Essentially it was “Hey, what happens if we just mesh our powers together?” vs “The enemy is at this point, making it easier for me to get a shot” basically. Interestingly is also the fact that she fought a trio of Chimera Anima that worked as a team, and with her idea she brought her team together to work to fight them off (granted it was just her and Niji, but it is also the first instance we see of combined powers so in a loose sense this still applies.) *'Nexus' is a different case—her first fight was with a Chimera Anima I did not name, nor do I really remember what I intended it to be. But rereading it, I took it as a rodent or even a mouse. Going off that we have symbols regarding endurance, adaptation, innocence and modesty, which fit nicely into Nexus’ situation and personality simultaneously (this is unfortunately a bit of a stretch, but Nexus plays a major role in other parts of the story, so I'm sure we can afford to overlook her first battle's symbolism for now). Perhaps these are silly, but I found the coincidences and symbolism a little funny, especially since I hadn't planned for there to be meaning in the Mews' battles beyond the ones that were extremely important plotwise. I suppose the last thing I can think of to talk about is any favorite chapter of mine. While I don’t have any one specific chapter in mind, I certainly found myself much more entertained with the story once the introduction chapters were done and Ehne was introduced. I guess in that regard, chapters 5,7, and 9 were some of my favorite. Despite the clunkiness of the introduction chapters, I find them necessary, especially in a magical girl based series. Funnily enough, the first four introduction chapters were just HUGE elaborations and elongations of my original color-over Youtube descriptions for each character. I can plainly see, though, my transition from high school writing to early college writing where I started to learn how to write a little better. While by no means is my writing amazing, it is easy to see how much more effort I put into the story once I got the ball rolling. My introduction chapters prior to Nexus were very basic and clunky, and once I started college, I was able to correct my mistakes and write with a more structured form. I believe around chapter 5 there is a pretty obvious shift in structure, but it wasn’t very polished either. My old writing has its problems, and it’s a little embarrassing, yet still something I would leave behind as a kind of memento of my progression. Otherwise, the later chapters were a bit of an improvement then and beyond. For as many issues as my writing had, I am a little proud of myself for writing Galaxy Mew Mew because it was one of the only pieces I was writing at the time (until later on when I began to write my own stories for class and for local publication), so it is something I can always look back on fondly. A chapter I’m actually a little disheartened by now is the first half of Nexus’ introduction chapter. The style of writing is what gets to me the most. I tried very hard to make it work but there is so much needless exposition, so many scenes that could have been elaborated upon, and on top of that, the chapter alienates a reader who has no background information on this character or her people. I did write the story expecting the audience to have read the articles in advance, and that is a big problem. Stuff like that should be sheets of reference and summary for those who have already been introduced to elements or characters in your story, or who may need to know what they are getting into rather than a mandatory lesson prior to being introduced to them. That’s not always the case, such as in fantasy books where there are typically sheets of reference like character lists or maps briefly put before the story itself, but that’s in the case that the entire story includes elements, species, or regions foreign to the reader. In this case, I had the entire chapter to elaborate on her species a little more. If you read that first half of the chapter without knowing the terminology or the kind of species the Ecots are, you get lost or disinterested very quickly or feel alienated from the story. It could have worked so much better if I polished it more and took the time to actually elaborate on things that were confusing, keeping in mind an audience with zero exposure to the species. To me, a lot of the same problems I had in the first four chapters were very prominent here—overexplaining or not elaborating enough, poor pacing, etc. Even the relationships between the established characters in that first half is very difficult to believe at times because it is so quickly breezed over. The first few chapters were clunky, but I did spend time on dialogue that helped build a relationship between characters and gave the reader an idea of what kind of bond they shared. But here, I seemed to have executed this poorly in this first half of chapter 6. That’s how I saw that portion of the chapter, anyway. I by no means think the actual story itself is awful, but the way some story elements were executed (or not executed) frustrates me since I wrote it! I can’t think of much else to talk on, but if anyone ever wants to ask me about the story more, they’re welcome to. I’m just very happy that I could finally finish it after all this time. I do intend to try doing more art of it here and there. Other than the short epilogues, though, I have no real plans to expand the story or universe. I want to say thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed it! -Annika. Epilogue 1 Epilogues Hub Category:Blog posts Category:Galaxy Mew Mew Category:Annika's Pages Category:Galaxy Mew Mew Chapters